6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST politics, revivalism in northern India must be seen as a phenomenon organically related to the cultural development of a specific straturm of society. Indeed, revivalism is so much a part of the culture of this stratum that one necessarily introduces a limitation in one's understanding by identifying revivalism as a streak distinguishable from the rest of the cultural pattern. Also, when we study it as a st reak of the social personality of a particular stratum, we run the risk of ignoring those aspects of this streak which are not consistent with the customary understanding of the connotations of 'revivalism* as a term. 'Opposition to modernity' is one such connotation. Neither of the two sources we will be talking about provides proof of such opposition On the contrary, as Erdman3 noticed in a somewhat different context, modernity is subsumed in the philosophy of the political right in India. Neither the Arya Samaj nor the RSS were or are anti-modern as one might expect while calling them 'revivalist*. Only, they propose a rather different political route to modernisation from the one proposed and pursued by organisations usually seen as non-revivalist or secular in the Indian context. THE SHAPING OF MODERN HINDI The Hindi region came under colonial control long after the penetration of coastal India by English administration, language and education had taken place. By the time colonial education policy found an operational structure in the Hindi region, with its avowed goal of spreading literacy, an important change was already taking shape in the social milieu. This change had to do with the arrival of printing technology. Availability of the printing press had altered the uses of reading and writing and thereby the meaning of literacy. Any individual or institution could now create a text and disseminate it. Literacy now meant not just the ability to decode a text with the help of one's familiarity of a script, but also implied the power to project meanings and to share them with a scattered audience. Text-creation was no more a function of some few individuals, nor was textual communication any more confined to local spaces defining a proximate community. The growth of colonial administration had brought about substantial expansion of literacy-related employment, and the development of a postal system. Under these circumstances, literary journalism acquired a dislinct cultural function—one of pulling together into a sense of community a heterogeneous town-based society. It consisted of salaried professionals and office hands, merchant groups, property owners in towns, and rural land-owners with urban links. Heterogeneous though this educated town-based society was in terms of its economic character, it was mainly upper-caste, dominated by Brahmins and Kayasthas. This emerging community included a literati committed to controlling the